Tag - Infinity

In the last several months, I've been looking more and more at playing Horus
Heresy. Several friends of mine have gotten into it and have said how much they
enjoy it. Whenever I start to get tempted by a game like this, I start looking
around for more information on it, ostensibly so I can make an informed
decision, but with the handy side-effect of scratching the itch a bit without
requiring a lot of expenditure. The unfortunate consequence of this approach is
I end up thinking more about the game, which can then spiral into buying a
bunch of stuff. That's not always the case, reading up on Warmahordes put me
off that system, but it does often happen.

There are a couple of problems with diving head first into the Heresy for me
though. The first is that I naturally baulk at spending the kind of money that
is required for a full Forge World army. I know that I could use cheaper models
from GW or a 3rd party company, but I'm not keen on that sort of compromise.
Part of my reasoning when getting back into the hobby was that I could now
afford to buy the things I wanted and I don't have to compromise as I did when
I was a kid. That does kind of contradict what I said about not wanting to
spend money, but the way I compensate for being able to buy pretty much
whatever I want is to try to focus on only one thing at a time. When I was a
kid I would have happily collected twenty armies at once but I couldn't afford
it. Now I'm an adult and I can afford it, I (in theory) possess the willpower
to pick one army and stick with it, thereby avoiding spending huge sums of
money on things that are only going to sit unused in boxes for the rest of
time. This brings me to the second problem with starting Horus Heresy, which is
that I still have plenty of Orks to build and paint. I should be concentrating
on them, not buying an expensive new army.

I decided that I would try to direct my attention elsewhere, to something
that would be less expensive and require less time than a full Heresy army. I
looked around at various other systems (which is why I was looking at
Warmahordes), and I got caught on Infinity. I've looked at it before and
thought it looked cool, this time I dug a bit deeper into the game. I like that
they make the rules and unit profiles available for free online, I also like
the idea that even when it's not your turn you get to play due to automatic
reaction orders. The hard sci-fi/anime setting really works for me as well, and
the low model count is a major plus given the speed of my painting and the fact
that I'm already committed to an Ork army that naturally comes with a high
number of minis. Personally, I like to read about the background before I get
into a game, particularly when it comes to choosing an army to play. In that
sense, the set-up that Corvus Belli have for Infinity of giving the rules away
but putting the background in the book you have to pay for worked really well
(for them), as I had enough free reading material to get me interested, but I
had a clear reason and desire to buy the book. I picked up the rulebook and
core book set and spent a few pleasant evenings reading through it. I'm
intending to play Aleph, but I haven't bought
anything beyond the main books yet. While I was in the prevaricating phase of
“I really like the look of this” but “should I really start a new game and army
and everything that goes with it”, Corvus Belli announced the new version of
the Human Sphere book would be out in December. That will have a bunch more
background information, particularly on Aleph, so I was able to put any further
purchases off until then (although I do keep looking at the
Operation Icestorm box).

All of which satisfied my urge to start buying a new army, with a minimum of
expenditure. I was very pleased with how the whole thing had worked out.
Unfortunately, then a friend of mine decided to sell up his Horus Heresy stuff,
so I ended up buying his
Crusade Army list and
Isstvan campaign legions red books. It was really a moral decision, I was
helping by buying them and my desires didn't come into it one way or the other